I’ve been reflecting recently, after meeting up again with an old friend, on how my perceptions of relationships have both evolved and changed: I first knew my friend when I was 18 and she was 3 or 4 years younger, and our families knew each other well. As it happened I was going out with* an older member of her family, though it was a less than healthy relationship, for all sorts of reasons.

My then partner was abusive – but so were his friends. More than one or two of them, at one time or another, tried awkwardly, drunkenly or aggressively to shove their tongues down the back of my throat whilst trying to tune my breasts in to Radio Caroline by the magic of using my nipples for dials – and I was 18, and in an abusive relationship. Some nights, my nightmares were made of dozens of free floating hands.

It was a working class environment, but no, that doesn’t make domestic violence more likely. The violence, control or assault which comes from the more privileged social backgrounds just has a slightly different costume, and a mildly altered script. But [usually] LBTQIA/cis/BAME/disabled working class women are more likely to depend on social assistance from local government, to be able to extricate themselves from the violence. These were the women who were the core of my friendship group – they were hard working and house proud (rightfully so): they make sure the money stretches (less easy now), and get creative when need demands. Long before ‘upcycling’, LBTQIA/cis/BAME/disabled women knew how make the clothes, the furniture, or that old tub in the shed into something that felt like you had something new, and special.

The trope of the slovenly single parent on a council estate, given flesh via Thatcher’s hardening rhetoric in the ’80’s – and later ‘Little Britain’s’ grotesque cartoon of an over painted child in a pink tracksuit – jars in me, then as now. My family lived on a middle class suburban estate, very nuclear but my Dad’s lower management job was the first of the rungs of management to go in a number of large London-based corporations as they geared up for Thatchers first big privatisation push (so I had comparative but nevertheless very real privilege). But I had gone to a council estate Comprehensive school, and spent most of my early social life on that estate (a whole other story). And then spent the two years I was in that abusive relationship living on another- and I have to tell you (and if I do have to tell you, then considered yourself in receipt of a look), that every single one of those tropes about (usually working class) single mothers was, and is, a long, long way from the truth.

Whilst there weren’t less hands as I got older, I learned to navigate … all that stuff (insert gesticulating hands to indicate unwanted male attention) better. Okay, no, I didn’t: I just accepted I was happier and healthier learning not to be ashamed of being ‘the introverted one’** – so it would be more accurate to say that I’ve therefore spent less time in situations where …unwanted advances might be a possibility.

And no, that’s not the same thing as hiding. Though it is also true that even when you’re disabled, you’re not safer – in fact it’s more likely. A confident introvert doesn’t need to be a dichotomy.

But I also trust my instinct now, sometimes even before the evidence of my eye. My instinct is my instinct for reasons, and I don’t argue with it. If a person gives me certain vibes, that person and I aren’t likely to be developing any sort of relationship. And whilst I will own to being hyper vigilant (and chronically anxious), the reasons my instincts are my instincts, are because they learnt what I was slow to trust.

Contrary to what the patriarchal/masculine/western/christianised tropes will tell you, ‘instinct’ is nothing more or less than a subconscious learning of patterns of behaviour, the identification of trigger points, the body language, the tells – you know, those little signs of trouble; learning the language of danger, and of warning. It’s perfectly logical, and y’all loved Tim Roth doing it in Lie to Me.*** Memory is a muscle too.

There’s also the other face of the coin that comes with the extra vulnerability to coercive control, domestic violence and assault as a disabled woman – that we are simultaneously assumed to be sexless, absent of desire, and undesirable. (And whilst I love my queer community – no, y’all are no more inclusive than able bodied communities a lot of the time, but that’s a whole other conversation).

So it’s no less a jungle now, than when I was 18, though I’ve through passed from Tropical Forest through to Tropical Savannah (and once, by accident, through a saltwater swamp, though this may be a slur upon saltwater swamps). Also, I’m not alone in sharing that whilst most predators are usually straight cis men, sometimes they are not****, so if you ever feel a bit Lost in a Scrub and Thornbush Savannah with that one I believe you.

* we used to call it ‘going out with’ when I was – well, younger. ‘Dating’ certainly wasn’t a term used within 20 parsecs of where I was spending my youth. I’m also apparently now of an age where I note these things. There’s probably no hope for me to be honest.

** I am the product of an introvert (who did a lot of pretending to be an extrovert) parent, and an extrovert parent, (they’re divorced, and happily so). And it is possible for an extrovert parent to accept that no amount of cajoling is going to change said introverted child.

***I once had a knock-down-drag-out with a friend who was one-of-those-screaming-misogynists-with-extra-mummy-issues (who thought of himself as a forward looking and progressive man – and yeah, I know), who insisted that ‘feminine intuition’ (grrrrr) was a nonsense, compared to the slightly dodgy, rather glossy pseudo science, that was the staple of Lie to Me’s 2(?) seasons – slightly dodgy, rather glossy pseudo science being apparently more acceptable than ‘feminine intuition’. Because of course <insert rolling eye emoji>

Since I first contacted you almost 10 months ago about my application for ESA, and my concerns about this given that I am a wheelchair user, I have sought to communicate to you the multiple issues of inaccessibility at Colchester’s ESA Assessment Centre. I have sought to do so with patience, with reason and with a (now obviously misplaced) hope that you would listen to all of the concerns, frustrations, fears and experiences of those of us who have been subjected to the discriminations that arise from those many problems.

Don’t worry Will – I’m not looking for a conversation on social media about this. It’s just that whatever patience, reason and hope I had that you would put party politics aside and help tackle the discrimination your disabled constituents face has this week finally evaporated. You have now made it clear that you are not interested in raising up the voices of your local constituents. If you want to keep spinning the report that a mutual acquaintance drew up about the inaccessibility of the building as a report commissioned by you, be my guest. It is only one of the many incidents in which you have been utterly disrespectful of the work that my friends and I have been forced to engage with over the last 3 years since you became our MP. We recognise that we are in the wrong political party for you, and that a great many of our concerns and fears won’t be addressed because of it.

As you know, the door to the ESA Assessment Centre in Colchester is impassable to wheelchair and mobility scooter users, and presents a significant barrier to many more who require other mobility aids (due to the width of the door and how heavy it is). The intercom at the door has no hearing loop, so is useless for deaf wheelchair and mobility scooter users. At the 2015 meeting which DPAC held with you, they raised this. It was not followed up. When my friend Jaki wrote to those concerned to request a foldable ramp as a reasonable adjustment and advised you she had so, in November 2016, it was not followed up. When she advised you in the summer of last year that she had been found ‘fit for work’ as a result of not being able to attend her appointment – you had no questions to ask on her behalf about this.

When I wrote to you last year, you eventually seemed to show some willingness to engage with that issue. Yet when this elicited a fairly cursory note from the Minister of State for Disabled, Health & Work Sarah Newton MP – that it was not possible to make the building physically accessible – you had nothing to say about reasonable adjustments, and no questions to ask about that either.

Are you familiar with the Equality Act at all Will? Seriously – are you? Because in all these months, despite mine, and my friends repeated references to it over the last 3 years, you haven’t mentioned it once – the word ‘discrimination’ has never been used by you either, despite the multiple evidences of it that we have presented you with.

When she wrote to tell you that she had been given inaccessible appointments, and been found fit for work for ‘failing to attend’ those inaccessible appointments this was your response:

The letter sent to Jaki Whyte, by Will Quince MP, in August 2017

When she told you that her tribunal had been held without her (or her benefits officer) being present (because of the DWP’s failure to send through the date and paperwork until AFTER the tribunal had been held – which is an accessibility issue), you ‘appreciated’ my friends ‘desire’ for a new tribunal and offered to write to the tribunal service.

Did you? Only my friend has now been living below the poverty line for 50 weeks, and her physical and mental health is hanging on by a mighty fine thread, and she’s been told she may have to wait up to 6 months, just for a statement of reasons. We didn’t ask you to pay lip service to these issues – we asked for your help in resolving them.